Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Newly installed US wind turbines fell 92% in 2013

Over the past decade, the wind industry has been the U.S. poster child for scalable renewable energy development. In the fourth quarter of 2012 alone, the U.S. added a record-breaking 8.38 GW of wind turbines, surpassing 60 GW of total installed capacity. To put this in perspective, the newly installed wind projects in that single, three-month period:

Could produce roughly enough energy annually to match Ireland’s annual power consumption, and more than enough to power Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Luxembourg combined

Moreover, best-in-class wind resources are now cheaper and less volatile than natural gas, even with little to no state renewable incentives, as evidenced by recent pro-wind utility actions in Colorado and Alabama.

However, in the first quarter of 2013, the wind industry installed only 0.0016 GW in the U.S., a 99.98 percent drop from the previous quarter. In the second quarter of 2013, the industry did not install a single large turbine! Overall, the annual newly installed wind capacity fell by 92 percent in 2013. [remainder at source]